[log in to unmask] writes:

>I had a girlfriend who is a doctor that said Beethoven's symptoms directly
>correspond to a certain disease which gradually fuses the inner ear bones
>together over the course of many years.  Today this condition is cured by
>replacing these tiny bones with plastic ones.

Sorry, but with all due respect, your girlfriend was wrong.

Beethoven's deafness, whatever the cause was, was a sensorineural hearing
loss, not a conductive hearing loss, as would be the case if there were a
problem with the ossicles.  This is clear in Beethoven's own descriptions
of his hearing loss dating back to the late 1799s, in which he describes
difficulty with high pitched sounds, and with certain vowels (ref:
Thayer's Life of Beethoven, ed.  Forbes).

Ronald Wharton, MD